The district was first mapped by Surveyor-General Sir Thomas Mitchell in 1846. By the end of the 1840s pastoralists had penetrated the area, and in 1849 Mitchell directed a surveyor, Burrowes, to select a township site on the Balonne River. Burrowes did so and named it after the diamond-polishing city of Surat, after his former place of residence in present day Gujarat state, then known as the Bombay Province, India.[3]